This study uses two main styles of leadership to show the effects on teachers’ somatic stress:
- autonomy-supportive leadership
- autonomy-thwarting leadership

Two Leadership Models in COVID-19 and Somatic Burden Study

Workplace buoyancy is defined as a teachers’ personal resource used by the individual to help thwart or navigate challenges in the workplace. The study claims that this is different from the concept of resilience, because resilience generally refers to the ability to get through chronic or extremely difficult situations, while workplace buoyancy is simply the ability to successfully navigate everyday work challenges. Therefore, the main difference is in the degree of the challenge, and the relative recurrence of the same difficulties.

For example, during COVID-19, a main challenge for many teachers was having to rapidly adjust to online learning, figuring out how to navigate their work-home life now that they were in the same place, and learning how to accommodate diverse situations in students’ homes.

In past studies, workplace buoyancy has been shown to alleviate disengagement in work, and has been associated with lower ‘failure avoidance motivation’, which is defined as motivation driven solely by a personal fear of failure. 

This study hypothesized that workplace buoyancy would be negatively associated with the three dependent variables of the study: somatic burden, stress related to change, and emotional exhaustion, because teachers that had high workplace buoyancy would be able to navigate the difficult circumstances of COVID-19 and online learning.

Workplace Buoyancy

Three groups of background characteristics served as covariates in this study:
- gender, teaching experience, and school location
- teachers’ working situation during COVID-19
- Big Five personality domains of teachers

The Role of Teachers’ Background and External Characteristics in COVID-19 and Somatic Burden Study

To summarize, the study examined work-related outcomes of teachers and the role of two leadership factors, autonomy-supportive and thwarting, and workplace buoyancy on mental health outcomes: somatic burden, stress related to change, and emotional exhaustion. 

The styles of leadership were purported to be predictors of workplace buoyancy. The study also examined the interaction effect between the two different leadership styles to see whether the buffering and boosting processes identified in the JD-R model are true in this case. 

Finally, the study tested alternative models to see whether the hypothesized study model was the best way to examine the outcomes.

Overview of COVID-19 and Somatic Burden Study

University of California, Davis

This study sought to understand and elaborate on teachers' work experiences during COVID-19 in Australia. This study examined teachers' experience with COVID-19 and online learning through two leadership factors, as well as workplace buoyancy, to see how these factors contributed to the three dependent variables: 

- somatic burden
- stress related to change
- emotional exhaustion

The two leadership factors can be defined as follows:
- autonomy-supportive leadership: leadership practices that promote teachers to be self-empowered and take initiative
- autonomy-thwarting leadership: leadership practices that focus on exerting control and reducing self-determination

Additionally, the study examined workplace buoyancy, defined as the ability to overcome substantial challenges at the workplace.


Introduction to COVID-19 and Somatic Burden Study

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2332858420986187

COVID-19 and Teachers’ Somatic Burden, Stress, and Emotional Exhaustion: Examining the Role of Principal Leadership and Workplace Buoyancy (Reference)

Hypothesized Model for COVID-19 and Somatic Burden Study

In the initial stages of the pandemic, from January - March 2020, as the rest of the world was shutting down, Australia was managing quite well with few COVID-19 cases. However, around May 2020, Australia too shut down its’ schools, and placed the country on lockdown. Additionally, though like the rest of the world, Australia was impacted by COVID-19, the study claims that due to the fact that Australia was not as direly impacted by cases and deaths like the United States or United Kingdom, Australians did not have as much mental stress as Americans or British people. 

Due to the fact that Australia has both private and public schools, closures varied based on whether the school fell under government jurisdiction or not. The study points this out as a factor taken into consideration, as they asked the teachers that they used for their data sample whether they were teaching completely remotely, half-remotely, in person, or remote as usual, meaning that they were already teaching remotely before the pandemic. 

COVID-19 and School in Australia

The study takes its theoretical framework from a previous study (Bakker and Demerouti, 2017), using a theory called Job demands-resources theory.

Theoretical Framework for COVID-19 and Somatic Burden Study

The sample of the study was made up of 325 teachers from eight states/territories in Australia. The breakdown is as follows:

Personal Data:
- 67% were female, 31% male
- 2% nonbinary/used different terms than cis-terms to describe gender
- average age = 39 years old (SD = 12)
- average experience teaching = 12 years (SD = 11)

Workplace/Environment:
- primary school teachers (48%)
- secondary school teachers (39%)
- both primary and secondary school teachers (13%)
- public/government schools (64%)
- Catholic schools (15%)
- independent schools (20%)

SES:
- low SES school (9%)
- below average SES school (12%)
- average SES school (48%)
- above average SES school (25%)
- high SES school (5%)

Location:
- inner city (13%)
- suburban (61%)
- rural (23%)
- remote (3%)

All data was collected from May 13 and May 25, 2020 during which various districts were in lockdown. Most people at this time were teaching fully remotely at this time. 

Data was collected through Qualtrics.


Methods of COVID-19 and Somatic Burden Study


The main findings of the study were that autonomy-supportive leadership was associated with greater workplace buoyancy, and lower somatic burden, emotional exhaustion, and stress, and was indirectly associated with the three outcomes via workplace buoyancy. 

Autonomy-thwarting leadership was positively associated with emotional exhaustion. 

Learn Before

Related

Learn After